It is clearly completely ridiculous to go overseas for the weekend, but there are quite good deals on flights nowadays and Robert is in London and what's the point of making a good living if you don't do completely ridiculous things every now and then? So that's why this entry is late.
My week was quite hectic, including one night when I was in the office until almost 7:30. That meant that I didn't feel particularly guilty about taking off a half hour early on Friday. Which would have been fine had the bus to the airport been on time. When it was about 15 minutes overdue, a guy asked if anybody was interested in sharing a cab. I jumped on the offer, as did two other people. It's still quite a bit pricier than the bus, of course, but not dreadful and it got me there in plenty of time. British Air (not an airline I like, but they were significantly cheaper) had managed to ignore my request for an aisle seat and tried to stick me with a center. Luckily, I was able to change that at the gate, getting the last aisle seat there was.
The flight was okay and I got a little sleep, albeit low quality sleep. It wasn't too hard to figure out the bus at Heathrow, a poor substitute for the tube, which was undergoing some sort of repairs. Apparently, the bus was free. Or, at least, there was no way to buy a travel card before getting on it, and the driver told me to just get one at Acton Town station. There was a bit of a fiasco with a train that had non-functioning doors, but the resulting delay was only maybe ten minutes. I got to Robert's, where I took a brief nap.
We spent Saturday afternoon seeing a musical. "Anything Goes" was a safe choice, being Cole Porter. It was silly, but enjoyable. I'm not sure how much the book has been changed for this current production. I do know that at least one song was added, since "Friendship" was originally from "Dubarry Was a Lady." A funny book, lively songs, and production numbers that depend on dancing rather than special effects - what more do I need?
We decided to have dinner at Los Molinos, a tapas bar that we've eaten at a couple of times before. Before that, we walked around Fulham Palace Road some, mostly because we noticed it when trying to locate another restaurant we'd read about. Our dinner was excellent, with particularly notable fish dishes. Of course, we never remember from one visit to another what we ordered and what we did and didn't like, so it's always a bit of an adventure. The sea bream was particularly tasty, but my favorite was a sort of fish cake with herb mayonaisse. I liked the chick peas with spinach and cumin, but Robert didn't care for them. He raved about the fried sweet potatoes, though.
Sunday's excursion was to Kew Gardens. We managed to see most of the gardens, skipping only one of the greenhouses and part of another. I made Robert look at carnivorous plants, which he doesn't like as much as I do, but he made up for it by making me look at cacti. I suspect that the optimal time for visiting the gardens is further into springtime, but I do like bulb flowers (tulips, daffodils, iris) so was satisfied. And the Japanese garden was particularly notable. All in all, a worthwhile excursion.
We planned to eat at a Thai restaurant in Chiswick, but had some time to kill first. So we tried to find a chocolate shop that Robert had read about. We found the shop, but it was closed on Sundays and had a less interesting window display than we'd expected. We wandered the neighborhood and noted several restaurants that looked appealing, as well as a cute used bookstore. Eventually, we did get our Thai food, which was good, though perhaps a bit less hot than I'd have preferred. The best dish was, by far, the fried fish with ginger and mushrooms.
The plan this morning had been for Robert to go to work at a reasonable hour and me to go out to eat a reasonable breakfast. I'll leave it up to your imagination as to what happened instead, but suffice it to say we surfaced just in time for me to get the tube to Heathrow. I have now discovered that the eating choices at Heathrow Terminal 4 are somewhat pathetic. Pret a Manger is, at least, edible food, but the seating area next to it is entirely inadequate. In fact, the seating areas throughout Terminal 4 are inadequate. My rant on airport architecture will wait for another time, though. My suspicion in this case is that they're trying to keep people from sitting on the grounds that this way they will spend their waiting time in the shops.
I should also note that I tried to check in using a self-service machine, which died in the middle of printing my documents. The woman at the customer service desk claimed that this was because the flight number had changed from when I made my original reservation, but this seems dubious as the machine had found my reservation just fine. Once again, they tried to stick me in a center seat. This time, I was unsuccessful in changing it, but lucked out when the person who was supposed to be in the window seat didn't show. So I moved to the window and was actually next to one of the three or four empty seats on the plane. The flight left nearly an hour late, but the schedule was padded enough that we arrived a few minutes early. Washington remains one of the fastest airports in the U.S. for immigration and customs, particularly since I had only checked baggage. So getting home was quick and unstressful.
While the travel aspects of this sort of thing are a pain in the neck, seeing Robert was worth a lot and the trip was, surprisingly, not too exhausting. So I'm likely to repeat the experience, though probably would do it on United instead.
Copyright 2004 Miriam H. Nadel